Wednesday, September 19, 2012

Milt Kahl often pushed the contact between two characters in order to achieve physical believability, but also comedy.

In these animation drawings Maid Marion acts out a romantic encounter with her playmate hero, Skippy. From the moment the characters' faces make contact you see how their facial features react, especially their cheeks, because they are soft.

For the final kiss Milt even squashed Maid Marion's muzzle, which is surprising because it is a boney part of a fox's head. But this makes for a more intense contact, and it looks funny.

As usual when Milt stages something like this, lines and shapes flow toward the area of interest, like the feather on Skippy's hat, Marion's eye line etc.

The last pose is pretty exaggerated, but still appealing.

Story artist Burny Mattinson used Milt's pose for a Robin Hood book illustration.

Burny did a number of beautiful Disney story books in the 1960ies and -70ies.